ld, and he's got a chest on him like a man.
Thirty-eight inches is what it measures. Why, I can't find a coat
that'll fit him."

He went on to point out some plain advantages, in addition to health,
that ordinary citizens might derive from a moderate knowledge of trapeze
work. In a fire, for instance, a man so trained would have little
difficulty in saving himself and others by climbing and swinging. And
firemen themselves would double their efficiency by regular practice on
high bars.

Again, in case of a runaway, a man familiar with the trapeze knows how
and when to spring for the bridle of a plunging horse. Or should he find
himself almost under the wheels of a trolley-car, he could leap for the
platform rail and swing up to safety.

"I'll give you a case," said Potter, "where the training we get helped a
good deal. It was a season when I was working with the Barnum outfit; we
were showing in the East, and during the hippodrome races a little girl
got away from her people somehow, and the first thing anybody knew,
there she was out on the track, with three four-horse chariots not a
hundred feet off, and coming on a dead run. As the crowd saw the child
they gave a great 'Uff' in fear, and lots of women screamed. It wasn't
in human power to stop those horses, and it seemed as if the little tot
must be killed.

"She was about half-way across the track when I started for her. Lots of
men would have started just as I did, but very few would have gone at
just the right angle to save her. Most men would have tried to run
straight across, but I was sure the horses would trample me and the
child, too, if I tried that. So I took her on a slant, running across
and away from the horses, and I caught her little body as a gymnast
knows how, didn't waste any time at it, and then--hoo!--we were over,
with the breath of those horses on our necks. If it hadn't been for the
practice I've had judging time and distance, we'd both have been killed
that trip."

I come now to another occasion when I spent two profitable hours with
the St. Belmos, husband and wife, who for years past and in many parts
of the world have appeared in a trapeze act that calls for the greatest
nerve and precision of movement. As a climax to this act, St. Belmo
makes a leap and swing of forty feet over his audience, springing head
first through a circle of knives and fire that barely lets his body
pass, then catching a suspended trapeze that breaks away at h